[exmadscientist]

Perhaps on a relative scale "most" fiction doesn't carry any sort of deeper meaning, but if you look at things like "Hugo or Nebula Award nominees" (to pluck out the SF/F genre as a category), I'd say that almost every single one of them, going back all those decades, has something more to say than just their straightforward text.

And unless reading is your day job or only hobby, that's a massive, massive corpus of interesting text. (In just one genre! There are more genres!) So on an absolute scale, there is so much fiction to read with more-than-surface-level meaning that I personally just don't understand why anyone would have the least interest in reading AI slop.

(I also don't have any real interest in most Kindle Unlimited works, probably for similar reasons. Though I am quite certain there are diamonds there, I've just not had particularly much time for/good luck at finding them.)

[Aeolun]

Sure, but that more than surface level meaning comes out in the story, not often in the specific way the sentences are written (I acknowledge those exist, I just don’t consider them the majority).

Also, you say you don’t understand why anyone would be interested in the AI slop. But from the article we learn that one is indistinguishable from the other (apparently even to the one professional author that tried)

[exmadscientist]

I was disappointed that the results shown didn't break things down a bit more between star ratings given and authorship guesses. I didn't think any of these stories were amazing flash fiction, and I think that's relevant here. I'm curious to know what people who liked them all, or at least really liked one of them, had to say on judging AI-vs-human.